PIOTR KOWALSKI
Artist, architect, engineer and theorist, Piotr Kowalski occupies a unique place in the history of post-war art. Born in Poland in 1927, he left Europe after the Second World War to study mathematics and architecture at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. This dual scientific and architectural education would become the foundation of his entire artistic practice.
After working alongside leading figures of modern architecture such as I. M. Pei, Marcel Breuer and Jean Prouvé, Kowalski settled in France in the late 1950s and gradually abandoned architectural practice to devote himself entirely to art. His ambition was to bring together art, science and technology in order to make the invisible forces governing our world perceptible.
A pioneer of technological art, Kowalski began experimenting as early as the 1960s with materials and processes then unprecedented in artistic practice, including light, neon, lasers, magnetic fields, holograms, electronic systems and computer networks. Far from viewing technology as an end in itself, he employed it as a poetic tool to reveal the laws of physics and stimulate the viewer's imagination.
His work has been exhibited at some of the world's leading institutions, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Centre Pompidou, the Stedelijk Museum and the Venice Biennale. Alongside his gallery practice, he realised numerous monumental public commissions throughout France, the United States and Japan.
Through a body of work grounded in experimentation and the transmission of knowledge, Piotr Kowalski is now recognised as one of the great pioneers of the dialogue between art, science and technology, paving the way for many contemporary artistic practices.
